Adults and kids alike will be instantly hooked on this addictive mobile game that uses angles and power to strategically knock marbles off the board. It is an excellent way for kids to learn force and trajectory. Monster Marbles is a great game for parents and even grandparents to connect with their kids and grandchildren!

Refine your skills in single player classic and attack campaigns, or play quick 1-vs-1 random matches. Prove you are the best by competing against players from around the world in tournament-style play to win the Monster Cup!

This strategic game requires skill, a true aim and consideration – how much power should you put into your shot? What angle should you hit the marbles from? Which marble should you hit first?

Snoopy Snow Brawl ignites a passion for programming through a fun game with recognizable and lovable Peanuts characters. The multi-player coding game encourages young kids to use problem solving, strategy and algorithms in a snowball fight between Woodstock and his bird friends that Snoopy referees.

Kid coders can engage in silly battles with or against friends, or against the computer, in either one-on-one or two–on-two challenges.? Other features and functionality include:

● A warm, engaging and familiar Peanuts experience

● Interactive puzzles

● Step-by-step tutorial

● Word-free block based programming

● Four different stages for learners at every level

● Authentic Peanuts music and voices

● A game that is a perfect match for the holiday season and the annual excitement around A Charlie Brown Christmas

“We are so honored to have been asked to create a new category of coding game with one of the world’s most-loved brands,” said Grant Hosford, Co-founder and CEO of codeSpark Academy. “The rich legacy of the Peanuts gang inspires our team and with Snoopy Snow Brawlwe believe we’ve created a learn-to-code game for youngsters that lives up to the brilliance of Charles M. Schulz and encourages a lifetime love of learning.”

The game focuses on the concept of sequencing and allows players to practice their coding skills in a variety of silly and fun ways. Research has shown that after just three sessions with codeSpark Academy, kids score 22% higher on sequencing tests.? Skill with sequencing has a direct and positive correlation with improved math and reading scores.

Coding also requires kids to think critically and creatively when solving problems. Snoopy Snow Brawl increases access to quality STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) learning opportunities for K-5 students and is a featured activity in code.org’s Hour of Code initiative during Computer Science Education Week from December 4-10, 2017. Over 150 million kids in more than 180 countries have participated in Hour of Code since it was launched in 2013.

“codeSpark has demonstrated great care in bringing the Peanuts gang to a new audience of young coders while developing Snoopy Snow Brawl,” said Roz Nowicki, Executive Vice President of Peanuts Worldwide. “Being able to collaborate with them during Hour of Code is a great opportunity to share the joy of Peanuts, along with the critical tools of programming and STEM skills, with this younger generation.”

“Engaging kids during the Hour of Code can give them a sense of confidence and delight, breaking down stereotypes associated with Computer Science,” said Hadi Partovi, Founder and CEO of Code.org. “With Snoopy Snow Brawl, codeSpark has created a fun learning experience that has the potential to inspire a love of computer science.”

Snoopy Snow Brawl is playable for everyone until January 15, 2018. ?Parents and public schools can download the codeSpark Academy app, which includes Snoopy Snow Brawl, for free. Teachers who complete the free registration will also receive a 20-hour curriculum and other supporting materials. To date, codeSpark Academy has been used by 20 million students worldwide in over 200 countries.

Snoopy Snow Brawl is available in the codeSpark Academy app on iOS, Android and on the Web at www.thefoos.com/hourofcode and you can check out the tutorial video here.

About codeSpark Academy:

Headquartered in Pasadena, codeSpark Academy is an award-winning computer science education platform for kids 5 to 10 years old. The app turns programming into play with a mix of curriculum based lessons, powerful creative tools and lovable characters called Foos. codeSpark Academy is the most used coding app for young kids and is played by millions in over 200 countries. Co-­founders Grant Hosford and Joe Shochet are dads and serial entrepreneurs who’ve built world-class mobile products for leading companies like Disney, Idealab, and eHarmony.

About Peanuts Worldwide:

The PEANUTS characters and related intellectual property are owned by Peanuts Worldwide, a subsidiary controlled by DHX Media and the family of Charles M. Schulz.

The game has been around since 2014 (and updated recently in September) but I only discovered it recently while in the car with my husband’s niece. She told me she was busy waiting for Tubbs (the fat white cat on the lower left) to come when I found myself watching her “yard” with interest.

She identified each cat by name, and showed me how to “attract” feline visitors to the yard.

“You can’t own the cats,” she said, “but you can take a picture of them.” That, ladies and gentlemen, is Neko Atsume Kitty Collector as explained by a very smart 10-year old named Pia.

Cats are odd little independent creatures who prefer a coolly distant relationship with their human friends. They will wander into your yard if you have food and toys. They will stay a while and then leave with parting gifts (cats don’t do that in real life unless if it’s to gift you with a dead mouse).

The gold and silver fish on the lower left represent currency to buy all sorts of food and toys to attract cats to your yard. (Cue that one hit wonder, 2003 Kelis song if you still remember … My cake box brings all the cats to the yard …)

You can collect money from gifts from cats or if you buy gold fish (fancier stuff) using real money.

The next challenge (a very mild one) is finding which toys and food will attract rare and not so rare cats to your yard. In real life, though, boxes often do the trick!

These cats come in different colors and patterns as well as a variety of purrsonalities. Not sure if there’s more to it than that, or if the kitty bio can help us figure out how to attract rare types.

purrsonality

And the photos:

The great thing about this app is that unlike other free to play games with timers and the like, where you have to constantly monitor the game for freebies, you can enjoy Neko Atsume offline. In fact, the app recommends that you suspend or reopen it to refresh and check on your yard. In other words, no need to watch it like a hawk. You can have a life outside of your phone.

Some minor inconveniences in the user interface aside, this cute game is for kids and busy people who want a fun, no strings attached kind of gaming relationship with their phone.

If you are a comic book fan and a gamebook fan, then Appointment With F.E.A.R. is right up your alley. This classic gamebook written by Steve Jackson is Tin Man Games' latest outing and adapts for the iOS the mechanics of a classic gamebook with an interesting new twist.

Appointment With F.E.A.R. parodies many familiar comic book heroes, villains and locales. As the main hero of Titan City, your job is to keep the city safe from an assorted lot of evildoers and thugs. Mainly, however, your mission is to prevent the meeting of F.E.A.R., a powerful organization of baddies, from taking place. Without much clues and only three days to do it, the challenge is to do the superhero stuff and be a detective at the same time. Oh, and as in typical super hero stories, your superhero identiy is a secret and you are a meek newspaper reporter by day (Clark Kent? Peter Parker?) with a mean boss.

If you've come across a gamebook previously or if you grew up reading Choose Your Own Adventure or the Fighting Fantasy series, then you would know that the big part of the experience is the fact that you make choices that affect the outcome of the story. You are not a passive reader – you are the star of the show! If you choose to become a diligent worker and prioritize work over investigating a possible crime, then that means there's a whole path you're not going down. If you choose to go to one location instead of another, there is a possibility that you will find an important clue or be misled by a red herring.

Of course, since Appointment With F.E.A.R.is a gamebook and superhero story you're playing, there's an element of combat here. You start out with a maximum stamina of 20. Based on the power you selected, you have three choices – light attack for low damage, medium attack for medium damage and heavy attack for high damage. The more difficult the attack, the bigger the likelihood of failure. Meanwhile, you also take damage, too.

The fun part of Appointment With F.E.A.R. is the fact that you can choose your superhero power and name (from a specific selection, unfortunately), and earn/lose points for your heroic deeds and puzzle solving abilities.

For each successful encounter with a villain, you also earn F.E.A.R. trading cards. These contain bite sized information about the villains you could encounter in the story.

So far, I have not been successful in stopping the meeting but it's been fun going down different paths. It's critical to gather the right clues pertaining to the meeting – guesswork and luck will not be of use here. However, I've had odd encounters with certain choices so close to discovering the details about the F.E.A.R. meeting that suddenly end up in the game restarting.

From the colorful and polished comic book style graphics and text to the appropriately campy background music, Appointment With F.E.A.R. hits all the right notes, and if you have not tried reading/playing gamebook adventures, this is one that you should pick up.

It is 1914 and you are in the middle of World War I. You are an ordinary soldier, thrust into the power struggle between great European countries, to serve as fodder for protracted battles on the ground.

The App Store's Editor's Choice of the week Valiant Hearts: The Great War relives the confusion and nightmare of the war, told through the eyes of ordinary folks called upon to serve their country. Just as war, in its broadest sense, is just the game of the generals, it is ironic to see the game make out of a high stakes 'game' that cost lives.

You'll readily see that in Valiant Hearts, it's the journey, not the destination that matters. To some extent the game captures the fear and feeling of unpreparedness for war, as your character has to be fast enough and agile enough to dodge bombs and machine fire, quick enough to think of a way to get into enemy territory without being seen, etc. These are achieved through mostly simple puzzles, with a handy hint system that tells you what to do if you've failed the challenge too many times. Oftentimes, the handy visual dialogue box that pops up is all that you need.

Valiant Hearts wisely uses ambient noise and occasional bursts of music (amid the gunfire and shouts) to keep things from feeling too still or relaxed. The background music, a melancholy piano, further highlights the story's context – war. The handdrawn art is just lovely and textured. The characters mumble and bark instructions in French – which you don't need to know, but adds a touch of authenticity to the scene. (Ironically, the voiceover of the main characters, such as French uncle Emile, are done in English) Speaking of authenticity, major events reveal historical trivia now and then, which is pretty useful to know. The story continues in downloadable episodes in the form of in-app purchases (IAP), which you can buy at your own leisure.

If you are looking for difficult puzzles, Valiant Hearts might not be your cup of tea. Puzzles in the broader context of a historical adventure are mainly there to move things along. In the early part, you will find a fair bit of Angry Birds type gameplay to hurl bombs and bottles and whatnot. Some puzzles just require you to move along.

While the game is nearly flawless, I find that handling the touch screen controls can sometimes be a hit or miss experience. Characters are a bit slow in their movvement, putting the emphasis on precise timing and moves. This is fine but sometimes it bogs down and sometimes slows me to a grinding halt.

Valiant Hearts is overall, more of an immersive experience than just a plain old adventure. It's a heartbreaking story that is all too painfully familiar since it is grounded in history. It takes us to an oft forgotten place and time where ordinary people were caught up in something much bigger than themselves, and through grit, grace and sometimes sheer luck, survived.

]]>https://appsized.com/2014/09/08/now-playing-valiant-hearts-the-great-war-for-iphone-and-ipad/feed/0themommylawyerPosted with BlogsyFREE for a limited time: Heroes of Kalevala and Unstoppable Gorg for iPadhttps://appsized.com/2014/09/07/free-for-a-limited-time-heroes-of-kalevala-and-unstoppable-gorg-for-ipad/
https://appsized.com/2014/09/07/free-for-a-limited-time-heroes-of-kalevala-and-unstoppable-gorg-for-ipad/#respondSun, 07 Sep 2014 07:15:48 +0000http://appsized.wordpress.com/?p=1701Continue reading →]]>Just wanted to give you guys a heads up that two excellent games are FREE this weekend. These are old favorites of mine and have stunning graphics and solid gameplay.

Heoes of Kalevala is not your typical match three game – it is in fact, one of the very best out there. It comes with a story culled from Finnish mythology featuring eight (8) distinct heroes and a village building mechanic, keeping you hooked on finishing levels to populate your village. It landed in appSIZED's list of Top 10 Games and Apps for 2010 together with 10tonsltd's other game Miriel's Enchanted Mystery.

Unstoppable Gorgis a one of a kind tower defense game with loads of personality and a really tough learning curve. What's nice about its is that you rotate your towers along a certain path to fend off incoming enemies from all sides. It's pretty tough. In between you have B-movie black and white clips that perfectly capture the retro sci fi vibe of the 1950s. In 2012, it was selected by appSIZED as one of its Top 10 games for the year.

It's been a while since indie developer Origin8 came out with a sequel to their award-winning tower defense (TD) series, Sentinel. However, Sentinel should be familiar to those who've been gaming on the iPhone and during the time when tower defense games were just starting to shine. With a long absence from the TD scene, does Sentinel 4 – Dark World measure up to the TD games that have come out since its hiatus?

Sentinel 4 – Dark World is – as you guessed – the fourth installment in the series, focusing on an intergalactic power struggle for power and resources in a new and unfamiliar alien world. This is a familiar tale, but there are nice touches in the storyline such as recruiting as an ally a former enemy. Early on in the gameplay, you will notice that this is no ordinary TD game, but a rather sophisticated one with depth and complexity requiring quick thinking in managing resources and micro-managing units.

In Sentinel 4, you have a wide variety of towers to upgrade and unlock. These towers either target ground or air-based units, with your typical slowing tower, cannonball tower, etc. A nice addition is a tower that just heals everyone else, and one that reveals invisible enemies. During each level in the campaign you earn coins which you can use to upgrade health, damage dealt, etc. A particularly useful upgrade is auto-repair which comes in handy for towers that do critical work but get damaged a lot.

Aside from your usual towers, you also have a drone that's effective for melee combat. You can place the drone directly in the path of incoming creeps, unlike towers, and the drones deal a fair bit of damage while surviving even the most crowded battleground. You also have barriers or gates to protect in addition to your main base, which is guarded by a mobile sentinel commander who serves as your supersoldier of sorts – the commander can jump from base to base and provide a much needed line of defense to protect your barriers or your main base. Your main base also harnesses resources and from there you can summon attack and repair drones for extra support. There are some extras such as earning interest (extra mmoney) from saving your gold – discouraging haphazard buying and upgrading of towers.

Sentinel 4 – Dark Worldis fast-paced and a lot more interesting and engaging than your average TD game, and rightly so, since Origin8 made a name for themselves with this series. It offers a deep system of upgrading and enhancing your towers, something many TD games lack. You can easily get a lot of hours of gameplay in upgrading your stuff, earning achievements and working out a strategy before going into battle.

I only have some minor quibbles about the game: one is the rather low res graphics (doesn't look so nice on a retina display) and another is the lack of adequate information in the tutorial and help section, requiring additional effort to figure out some things. Some, I have yet to discover.

Minor quibbles, notwithstanding, Sentinel 4 – Dark Worldis an excellent tower defense game that focuses on solid but deep tower defense. It offers enough variety and complexity to keep you on your toes, and reminds us all about what gold standard TD gaming should be about.

Hanx Writer for iPad may seem like a quaint idea to most, but for those e who grew up with a manual typewriter long before Microsoft Word became a household name, Hanx Writerbrings back memories and then some. The app, incidentally, was commissioned and endorsed by no less than award-winning actor Tom Hanks who is a typewriter fanatic.

Back then, typing was a challenging and frustrating experience. You needed to be extra careful when typing things – how soft or how hard you bang the keys means the difference between a smooth looking typewritten page and a page with out of place keys or smudged letters.

I can go on all day about the perils and terrors of typewriter ribbons gone threadbare and paper incorrectly inserted, but I'm not here to wax poetic about a bygone era, I'm here to talk about how Hanx Writerfares as a throwback app and as a notetaking/mini word processor.

The fun part about having a 'pretend' typewriter like Hanx Writeris that you get to enjoy the perks of typing manually without the corresponding headaches. The fun part of typing then was hearing the clickety clack of keys and watching words being hammered out on the page with a couple of quick strokes – the less than fun part was dealing with jammed keys, smudged letters and uneven typing. Nowadays, typing with a keyboard is a muted experience while a touchscreen computer is almost silent.

For a free app, you get to enjoy the experience of typing on a 'pretend' typewriter, complete with the clicking sound of the individual keys as you type and the ringing sound when you've reached the end of the line and have to move to the next. For the full-blown typing experience, you can even turn off the 'modern' way of correcting mistakes (read: backspace). However, it would also be nice to see keys a bit out of place just like what I was used to when I typed too hard. For select upgrades, you can try out new typewriter themes or styles or just get the entire pack for $5, which includes more ribbon colors, justify alignment, a title page with the option to put a picture, etc.

Hanx Writermakes typing on the touchscreen keyboard fun, but I've tried pairing the app with my trusty bluetooth keyboard and the experience has been seamless.

My only gripe with the app is that sharing options are limited. For now, you can only “share” or export your work in PDF, which you can of course open in other apps such as Goodreader and other PDF readers. It would be nice, however, to have other file saving options such as .txt or .rtf formats.

For a free app that you can straightaway enjoy without shelling out real money for in app purchases (IAP), Hanx Writer is a fun and engaging typing experience that is more than just a trip down memory lane. I can envision it to be my default writing app just to get those creative juices flowing. Check out the report below: